It’ll hopefully come as no surprise that the freelance life isn’t an easy ride. Being a freelancer is a constant battle to try and keep your income as consistent and stable as possible.  So any way we can build on and maintain our income, preferably long-term, is going to be a winner.

In this post, we’ll be giving you some tips on how to boost your income and give it a bit more stability.

Offer regular/retainer services

One of the best ways to boost your income is to build on the income you already get from current clients. Client retention is usually more profitable than client acquisition, that’s the same in almost every business.

It’s also easier to convince someone who has already worked with you that you can do the job well.

So once you’ve completed a project, don’t just leave it to gather dust in your portfolio. Pick up the phone, or send over a follow up email when some time has passed, and offer to work with them again, preferably on a regular basis.

While retainer clients are not 100% guaranteed income because things can change, they do offer you some stability.

Scale down your expenses

Another approach to help your income out is to minimise your expenses wherever you can. Are you spending money anywhere you could cut back on?

For example, if you do most of your work from a coffee shop, you’re probably spending a lot on fancy coffees. Try a different environment where you can bring your own coffee or find a cheaper location, e.g. and independent café rather than a chain.

Do a business audit every few months/year and take a look at where you’re spending money and where you could easily make cut backs. Those subscriptions you signed up for when you began can add up over time, even if you’ve forgotten about them.

Offer consultancy services

If you know you have knowledge that would be valuable in the right hands, there’s no reason why you can’t make a bit of money off it. In fact, it could be a lucrative service to add on.

You won’t necessarily have to create anything new like you would with your usual work. All you’d really need to do is talk to people and share knowledge you already have. This means you could make money with minimal effort and time spent creating new material.

Create a passive income stream

We’d all like to make money while we sleep but it seems like a far-off fantasy. However, there are some simple ways any freelancer can create a passive income stream. You could write and sell an ebook or you could create a training course or webinar and sell that to people. You just need to create the material once and then you can sell it multiple times.

Go into affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is another type of passive income. It’s usually in the form of blog articles that include links to sites selling products/services. In the article, you’d be expected to say nice things about the product/service to encourage your audience to buy from them.

Once they go through the link in your article and buy, you end up getting a percentage of the sales. All you have to do is create the content once and you can keep gaining from it.

Just don’t go overboard, if all your posts read like sales pitches for other businesses, your readers will go elsewhere.

For affiliate marketing to work, you’ll also need to have a good amount of traffic to make enough money from it. The same goes for selling advertising space on your website. Boost your reach and you will be able to boost your income from that.

Do you have any other ways you boost your income? Do you have passive income streams? Let us know your thoughts below.